Disney Joins Netflix In Harassing Password Sharers As The Enshittification Of Streaming Continues

We've noted a few times now how as the streaming sector consolidates and grows, it's becoming more and more like the traditional cable industry it disrupted. This enshittification includes a lot of endless price hikes, a steady degradation of product quality, pointless mergers that cause endless layoffs, and the implementation of new restrictive efforts to nickel-and-dime customers.

Like Netflix's recent crackdown on password sharing.

Netflix spent years encouraging the practice as a form of free advertising. But as the streaming market's growth saturated, Netflix turned to more creative ways to give Wall Street its improved quarterly returns at any cost (including product quality or customer satisfaction). Like charging users even more money for something it already monetized (users were already paying more for more simultaneous streams).

Unsurprisingly, other companies like Disney are now following suit, starting with Canada:

Disney has not provided many details on how it plans to enforce this policy - its email merely states that we're implementing restrictions on your ability to share your account or login credentials outside of your household." The announcement reads more like a strong finger wag than anything else. You may not share your subscription outside of your household," reads the company's updated Help Center."

Despite what Netflix and Disney claim, password sharing is not a major threat to these companies' fortunes. In part because there's no guarantee that the moochers" they're harassing (usually college kids or people who don't like paying for things) will sign up for their own accounts. Analysts have noted a lot of these companies' predictions of how much money they'll make from crackdowns are based in fantasy.

Netflix claims the crackdown has been a smashing success, but there's no hard evidence that's actually true so far. These streaming giants aren't really required to detail where new subscriptions are coming from in earnings reports, so whatever happens they'll insist it's all been a smashing success either way.

But nickel-and-diming your users as the streaming market gets more competitive simply isn't all that bright. Streaming competitors looking to make market inroads can give themselves an edge by simply being less annoying. And should some companies push too hard, they risk increasingly driving paying customers to the next layer of disruptive services like TikTok, Twitch, or YouTube as the cycle continues.